Planning for a new building involves a lot of important details. And while most people think about wall colors and room sizes when they think about the building process, there are many other details that are involved as well. For instance, the decision to use sound insulating walls and suspended ceiling clouds, as well as decorative acoustic ceiling tiles is a part of the decisions that are made in many kinds of buildings. From hospital rooms to universities, finding the right kind of sound protection and insulation can make a huge difference.
You may not realize it, but sound wall panels and sound absorbing ceiling panels are used in more places than movie theaters and performance venues. University classrooms, hospitals, and even apartment buildings rely on everything from decorative acoustic ceiling tiles to soundproof wall panels to make sure that people can study, recover, and live their own lives. Consider some of these facts and figures about the use and implementation of sound canceling devices in the buildings that are constructed and remodeled every year:
- Adding mass, damping, decoupling, and filling air gaps are the four tactics that are used in combination in the process of soundproofing a room.
- Decoupling used alone, for instance, can actually makes the wall worse at blocking low frequencies, because of the resonance of the wall. If the gap is only one inch, the equivalent of 2.5 centimeters, or less, a damping compound is highly recommended to fight this effect.
- Community noise can be detrimental to a person’s health. Adverse health effects from community noise include learning deficits and cardiovascular problems. Studies also show that the incidence of heart disease increases if community noise levels rise above 40 decibels (dB).
- 26 million people, which represents approximately 15% of Americans, between the ages of 20 and 69, have high frequency hearing loss because of exposure to noise during leisure activities or at work.
There is far more to planning building and remodeling projects than picking out paint colors and room sizes. The best planners know that installing the right kind of sound insulating panels can help you create a space that allows for better control of how sound travels across a space, as well as how successfully you can keep sound out of a given space.
